[A. G. Maisey]

Gustav, my first line should have read as did my initial response, forget the "will not", and substitute "reserve". To reserve comment is to delay comment. Some of your speculation and interpretation I would prefer not to comment on. But I'm happy to exchange comment on some other things.

My notes on sunggingan (2881) read:-
"The wr. has a sub-motif of stupas & foliage overlaid by gilt lines which are trunks & branches of trees & possibly a ground line"

This is how I saw it with it in my hand. I could be wrong, but in the absence of the object in question it is pointless discuss it. The way I did the photos on all these keris was not sufficiently technically advanced to permit a clear rendition of a very faint sub-motif.

As to "European knowledge".
Since very early days there has been continuing comment by people from Europe, and from societies founded in the European tradition, about the keris. Its not just Europeans, but other people who have some interest, or some training, academic or otherwise, who think they have something to contribute to the ongoing discussion. I must include myself in this group, as well as probably the most careful and accurate of all outside commentators, Garrett & Bronwen Solyom.

Some of the commentary generated by the outsiders has been excellent and has made available knowledge and understandings that are little known in Indonesia itself, or have been forgotten.

Some other commentary has been somewhere between silly and ludicrous.

However, whether that outside commentary has fallen into the "good" basket, or the "bad" basket has made not the slightest difference at all to the keris community in Jawa. I have selected Jawa specifically because this is the centre of the keris belief system and tradition, and also because I know the situation there very well..

I believe I understand how you intend your age estimates to be taken, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are looking at a minuscule sample of hilts of a known age, you look at the features in these hilts, then you compare with other hilts that you know to be younger. Based on this you form the opinion that certain features appear in the known older hilts, that do not appear in the known younger hilts.

I personally have a little bit of difficulty in subscribing to this methodology because the features that you point out in older hilts, I have seen in hilts that have been produced since 1980. These very recent hilts are obviously not at all old and could never be confused with old hilts, but to my mind the fact that design features in known old hilts are being repeated in known new hilts demonstrates a continuing tradition.

Thus, I question whether we can use design as an indicator of age, or whether these design features are in fact styles that come from different sources or areas of belief, or that have some other unknown reason for variation.

I do understand analysis. It is the foundation stone of how I have earnt my living for most of my life. What I know about analysis is this:- to draw conclusions we need a sufficiently large population from which to draw the test sample, then we need to factor in the statistical error. We do have a sufficiently large population of new hilts, we do not have a sufficiently large population of old hilts. Statistically the possibility of an incorrect conclusion is enormous.

We can make an observation, but we cannot draw a conclusion.

Gustav, it is beyond doubt that museums in Europe do hold some very old keris, as you know, I have seen, handled, and photographed some of these keris held by a number of museums. In some cases the keris that I looked at were documented, and what I found to be extremely interesting was that these keris that were sometimes several hundred years old could easily be mixed in with a batch of high quality, current production keris from the best Javanese and Madurese makers, and no collector that I know would be able to tell which keris was 200 years old, and which keris was 200 days old.

If we raise the bar just a little, and we have one of the people who are at the top of the Indonesian keris trade put one of the truly excellent current makers on his payroll, then give him a very high quality keris to copy, supervise the production, and then have old-style kinatah work done, the result will be a keris that perhaps only three or four people in the entire world will know to be a recently produced keris.

It was not the maker who produced the forgery, it was the man he was working for who used the maker as a tool. This same man, or one of his group, will introduce this keris into the local market, probably in Jakarta and it will sell for a price that nobody outside that local market would ever pay. We are not talking a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand dollars, we are talking tens of thousands of dollars.

This is not to say that keris that pretend to be what they are not do not enter the market outside Indonesia. Of course they do. Perhaps three times a week on average I have photos of this type of keris sent to me for comment and advice. Sometimes it is easy to see that I'm looking at a ring-in, other times its not, but these are all low priced keris, seldom above $1000, most often down around only a couple of hundred dollars. This is not the market that the market controllers are interested in, and for that reason any collector outside Indonesia is safe:- he will never suffer a big loss, simply because he will never even see, let alone be offered, the really high class work.

Bear one thing in mind Gustav:- I have been buying keris in Indonesia for about 40 years; you know who my teachers were; I have close, long term contacts in the keris trade in Solo. What others speculate on, I have seen.

The reason I started to deal in the first place was because I realised very early that it was the only way to gain keris knowledge:- the dealers, the craftsmen, the high level shonks hold all the knowledge, even the elite, experienced collectors and connoisseurs are trudging along in the dust behind them. Have you ever seen an honest book written by a high level Indonesian dealer? No, of course not, and you never will.

You mention a copy of an old sunggingan. Only one Gustav? I've seen dozens --- or more. The people who paint sunggingan wrongkos are the people who paint wayang puppets. They usually have pattern books that have been passed down through generations, not the actual books, but rather the patterns in those books, they sometimes add patterns when they see something that they like, and very rarely they will design a new motif themselves. Probably most of these artists have the pattern and the ability to reproduce an old sunggingan motif if they wish, but mostly they do not wish, because they need to make a living and it is easier to sell the motifs that are currently popular.

In respect of current production of accurate tajongs. This is something I don't know much about. The only current production tajongs I've seen for sale in Central Jawa and East Jawa have been very poor pieces of work that don't look anything like the real thing. I don't doubt for a minute that a competent Javanese/Madurese/Balinese carver could produce an accurate copy if he was given a model to work from. I believe it would be a carver who did the copy, not a m'ranggi or tukang jejeran. I do not know where these good tajongs are coming from, in fact, I can't even remember seeing a photo of one, but that is probably because I don't take a lot of notice of these fringe keris from other areas. Maybe a Jakarta or Surabaya dealer is getting them done in Bali or Lombok, there are extremely talented carvers in both places.